I’ve spent a fair bit of today trying to get this tutorial working. webdesignermag.co.uk. It’s supposed to make a poll and chart in Flash that connects to a MySQL database. I can’t get it to connect to my database though.

NB – I wrote this on 19/11/08 and then made lots of these ideas in flash. I’ve now reflected on them a bit so I’ll put my reflections below each idea I’ve done in italics. You’ll be getting action and reflection in one sweet sweet pill. Also, I’ve figured out a few bits of the php in that time and managed to get a version of the questionnaire online. I should add that the from isn’t yet linked anywhere. Click here to see it, though it’s likely to change every other day now. Today, it still needs design work doing on it. Maybe I should stick the flash files up here separately. Not sure about the best way of doing that. Okay, I’ll make an archive page somewhere. Soon.

I’ve just had a scribbling session thinking about how I’m going to make visual accompaniment for each question. Below is a pretty good typed version of that.

For my unit 2 prototype I’m planning on making a very basic version of the online questionnaire I’m planning. I’ve been learning PHP so that I can put the whole thing into a MySQL database and it will be searchable. We’re doing a show at the house gallery in December. I’m planning on showing this basic prototype then. Clearly I want to present something a lot more developed for the final show. But I’ll get to that.

I’ve just had a quick review of the questionnaire in the show in August. I’ve broken the questions down in to three categories. These are as follows:

I’ve been working on a questionnaire. If anyone has anything to say about it, I’d be most grateful for their thoughts.

When you hear the word all, do any vague impressions immediately flood your mind? ie – all of the known universe. Or all of the hairs on someone’s head.

At a rough estimate, how often do you think you say the word all on any given day?

When using the word all, how often do you use it in a completely logical manner?
How often do you use it as a rough figure of speech? ie – ‘I eat jam sandwiches all the time’. Surely ‘quite frequently’ would be more accurate.

What is the opposite of all?

Does all imply either wholeness, completeness, both or neither of these things?

Where is all’s centre?

If you had to leave it all behind, what would you take with you?

Can you name three pop songs with all in the lyric or title? What is being expressed by them?

The universe is mind-spanglingly big. However, there is, I’m told, evidence suggesting that the universe is not infinite and in fact is flat (At least that’s one theory that’s done the rounds). Now clearly I don’t expect anyone to have too much to say about crazy physics but I do have a question: When you consider what might (or might not!) be beyond the finite universe, how do you feel?

Do you think whatever is or isn’t beyond the universe is part of all?
in other words, do you think this unknown is nothing, or nothingness, and if so, is that nothing part of all?

I’ve just spent a happy hour or three watching the tennis and knocking these new experiments together.
The squares are a continuation of the experiments with the butter and the ice. I’m thinking about units, boundaries and that kind of thing. I think I need to write quite a long post explaining what I mean in some depth if I’m going to start using words.

This one’s also very much in progress. I’m thinking a much more developed version of it could work as some kind of punctuation in my final piece. One thing I’m curious about with it is the fact that at the very start you have all of the alphabet layered on top of itself forming this very dense block. It reminds me of my old chum Derrida and his thoughts about the trace. That’s what English looks like when it’s all stacked up. It makes no sense. But that’s what we have to choose from. It’s almost like Michelangelo’s block of marble before he sculpted David. It makes no sense before someone picks bits out and forms them into words, but the potential of it is always infinite. Bit like the Big Bang, in a deeply non-scientific analogy kind of way. And now we have a situation where the language is still expanding and bits of it are changing and getting re-purposed, much like the wider universe. Anyway, ’tis late, fair reader, I must go to bed before I slip in to another rant.

PS – Sorry I just realised these two shouldn’t really be on the screen together at the same time as they’re a bit much to take in at once. If you can see them both, make your browser window smaller.

i’ve just done a quick experiment looking at the constituent elements of an image. For the sake of Jonathan’s blogging research I’m leaving the writing at that. I’ll reserve the right to write more in a separate post if I feel like it.

Okay, I’ve not blogged for ages but I’ve got tons to blog about. I’m going to put it all in separate smaller blog posts, as I’ve got quite a few things to put up here which are all quite different. First off, then, I just did this mini experiment. I was wondering what would happen if I played with a simple sentence with an open ended meaning. It’s a bit rough round the edges and I’m inclined to get rid of the blur (particularly in this animated gif mode) but the basics are there. I’m still not sure what it means but it sums up a few things I’ve been thinking with this project so far. The whole thing is impossible to grasp, staying just out of reach. I think this crucial.